Posted on 08/10/2005 11:41:24 AM PDT by doug from upland
DO NOT MISS TODAY'S SHOW!
I spoke with a contact from D.C. today. Congressman Curt Weldon will be on today's show with Mark. We are going to learn a little more about the background of why 911 happened. Who is Jamie Gorelick? What was the "wall." Was that like a cone of silence? We want the answers. Kudos to Congressman Weldon who is on a crusade for the truth.
Congressman Weldon contact info:
2452 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone (202) 225-2011
Fax (202) 225-8137
LISTEN TO MARK LEVIN ONLINE AND JOIN THE DISCUSSION
6-8PM Eastern
Foolish, airhead, nonsensical, liberal callers, be prepared to hear
GET OFF THE PHONE YOU MORON, or
GET OFF THE PHONE YOU BIG JERK, or
GET OFF THE PHONE YOU DOPE
BenVeniste, whom Mark knows and detests, doesn't want to hear this. (I corrected Mark's grammar -- he said "who")
Mark is asking about Sandy Pants
I'd bet the farm that they are!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Weldon - I don't know what Sandy put in his pants.
Weldon: I don't know what Sandy put in his pantz! lol
Congressman Weldon contact info:
2452 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone (202) 225-2011
Fax (202) 225-8137
You know what's funny,the DUmmies think they are having a GOOD week! LOL
I hope this story gets VERY long legs now.
Dang--missed the show and the thread! Please add me to the Levin ping list.
Attention 9/11 Commission Report purchasers: We are currently recalling all 9/11 Report books. They contain false information that if believed, could be hazardous to your health. Although no reports of death due to printed lies have occured, there is a small chance of bleeding ears and exploding heads when the truth surfaces. Please discontinue all reading and return your copy to place of purchase at once. Or call 1-800-wedidn'tknow for further details.
By the way, has Richard Clark had anything to say about all this???? Or perhaps Janet Reno???
The Whitehouse will make sure this new revelation is buried.
Clinton damage control.
Posted by Captain Ed at 09:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
Dafydd: Tangled Webs, Contrasting Countdowns
Below, Captain Ed discusses the manifest intelligence failures on the part of the CIA, including the possibility that they booted an intelligence briefing by a military group known as Able Danger that might have identified some of the 9/11 hijackers in the fall of 2000 as members of a Qaeda cell in Brooklyn. Much of the evidence for this comes from Rep. Curt Weldon... and in brushing aside this possibility, CIA officials have attacked Weldon personally as a credulous and foolish man.
Indeed, the Captain quotes from a Slate article by Eric Umansky that uses this to dismiss the entire claim. But is this really legitimate evidence that exonerates the CIA, as Umansky believes? Or is this just another example of CIA "log rolling," where a series of supposed facts and assessments each rely upon the others in a vast circularity of citation?
Just to flesh out this whole business about Congressman Weldon, he is attacked by various liberal sources (e.g., The American Prospect magazine) for getting his information from an Iranian informant code-named (by Weldon) "Ali." The incident is also discussed in Kennth R. Timmerman's excellent book Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown With Iran, pp. 276-8 -- released the very next day after Weldon's similarly titled but distinct, Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it.
"Ali" is described by Timmerman as Ali M., "a former Iranian government minister" at that time in exile in Paris; Ali M. is very likely actually Fereidoun Mahdavi, whom Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer, writing in the American Prospect, describe as "formerly the shah’s minister of commerce and, more importantly, the close friend and business partner of [Manucher] Ghorbanifar." At the time of Mahdavi's contacts with Weldon, the CIA had already issued a "burn" notice pegging Ghorbanifar as an "intelligence fabricator."
Starting a tab, we have Rep. Curt Weldon saying that the group Able Danger tried to warn the CIA about Mohammed Atta and other members of that al-Qaeda cell back in 2000; the 9/11 Commission blew off the claim because it came from Weldon, whom the CIA considers a dupe of intelligence fabricators.
Separately, we have exiled Iranian Minister Mahdavi, a close friend of Ghorbanifar, meeting with Weldon to tell the congressman of various plots by the Iranians against the United States; the CIA blew off the warnings because they came from Mahdavi, whom they consider a dupe of intelligence fabricators. Although they are starting to get tangled, it's important to note that these are two separate strands of this intelligence web: Mahdavi has no connection with Able Danger.
In the Prospect article, Rozen and Heer claim that Mahdavi said that his information came from Ghorbanifar; but the supposed confession is a bit shaky, sounding more like what one would say to avoid suffering the grim and grisly fate of other Iranian defectors:
“I will deny any quote,” he says. “I gave information to Weldon from Ghorbanifar.” He insists that, because he cannot contact anyone in his homeland, he could not have been the original source for the information that the arms merchant asked him to pass to the congressman. “I am very well-known in Iran,” he says. “Everyone knows me. I cannot call there.”
It's also important to remember that the American Prospect is a deeply liberal magazine that has been opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning. What does this have to do with Iran? The authors of the article above see the quality of intelligence on Iran through the filter of the supposedly "faulty" intelligence on Iraq, for which they blame the "neoconservatives":
Indeed, to CIA analysts still smarting from the humiliations of the Iraqi intelligence fiasco, the reappearance of Ghorbanifar behind “Ali” must have set off loud alarms. The Iranian arms dealer not only symbolizes one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of American covert operations, which involved selling sophisticated weapons to a terrorist regime in exchange for hostages; with his neoconservative sponsors and opportunistic methods, Ghorbanifar very much resembles Ahmad Chalabi, another slick operator who eventually came to be viewed with the deepest suspicion -- but not before his faulty “intelligence” about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction helped to draw America into war.
Adding a bit more to the tab: the CIA is skeptical about the intel from Mahdavi because they are upset about Ghorbanifar, who "symbolizes" the Iran-Contra scandal.
Timmerman's description of Weldon's attempts to alert the CIA to the intelligence Mahdavi ("Ali M.") was faxing him matches that of the congressman. But Timmerman also discusses many other Iranian terrorist plots... and Timmerman, unlike Weldon, uses a great many sources. One of Timmerman's major sources is a former Iranian intelligence and security officer named Hamid Reza Zakeri, who says he was present at a number of meetings between the top Iranian mullahs (including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei) and top members of al-Qaeda (including Ayman al-Zawahiri and bin Laden's eldest son Saad). At these meetings, starting in January 2001, the Iranians were informed of the upcoming attacks on the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon, and other targets, says Zakeri. I discussed this in an earlier post here, It Ain't Even the Quarter.
I noted in that post that the CIA had similarly dismissed the intel from Zakeri, calling him a "serial fabricator" and "a fabricator of monumental proportions." Is this starting to sound familiar?
The tab mounts: Weldon's claims about Iranian involvement in anti-American terrorism are buttressed and echoed by Kenneth Timmerman, who is a much more careful researcher. One of Timmerman's prime sources, however, who has no connection to Mahdazi or Ghorbanifar, is also dismissed by the CIA as a "fabricator."
So let's tote up the damages:
1) The information about Able Danger's warnings about Atta and other members of the Qaeda cell come from Rep. Curt Weldon.
2) Weldon also believes in earlier information from Fereidoun Mahdavi about many plots by Iran against the United States, none of which is related to the Able Danger claim.
3) Mahdavi is a close friend of Manucher Ghorbanifar.
4) The CIA has labeled Ghorbanifar an "intelligence fabricator" who evidently "symbolizes" the Iran-Contra scandal -- which did not particularly involve the CIA, by the way, but rather the National Security Council.
5) Therefore, the CIA dismisses all claims from Mahdavi (this is the same CIA that completely missed predicting the revolution in Iran carried out by Ayatollah Khomeini from his exile in Paris).
6) Mahdavi's claims of Iranian terrorist plots against the U.S. are supported by Kenneth Timmerman, who relies upon a number of other sources (not Mahdavi).
7) The CIA dismisses one of Timmerman's sources, Hamid Reza Zakeri, as "a serial fabricator" and "a fabricator of monumental proportions."
8) Thus the CIA dismisses all of the other charges brought by Timmerman, as well.
9) Therefore, taking everything into consideration, Slate dismisses all of the claims made by Weldon about Able Danger.
Ah. Perhaps this is some new form of rhetoric of which I was previously unaware.
Maybe it's just me, but the syllogism (1-9) doesn't quite seem to match up with the rigorous logic I was taught in the graduate math department of UC Santa Cruz. But then again, I'm not a member of an intelligence organization that is desperately trying to convince the world that it's not utterly incompetent.
As for that 911 book, file it under fiction.
Yup, under either "Fiction" or "Fairy Tales"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.